Lawmakers are raising concerns about whether additional federal safeguards are needed to protect Americans’ health data when it is uploaded to artificial intelligence tools, Nextgov/FCW reported March 6.
During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing March 5, lawmakers from both parties questioned how patient information shared with consumer-facing technologies, such as health apps and wearable devices, could be used or monetized.
Unlike many clinical technologies used by healthcare providers, third-party digital tools are often not subject to the same privacy protections under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chair of the committee, said policymakers must consider issues such as liability, privacy risks and who benefits financially from patient data used in AI systems.
“It seems as if the future promise of these records would include AI giving clinical support,” Mr. Cassidy said during the hearing. “Who’s liable? Who gets to use the data that flows from it that might be for financial gain?”
Thomas Keane, assistant secretary for technology policy and national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency is gathering public feedback on the issue. HHS issued a request for information in December seeking input on how AI can be deployed safely in healthcare.
Mr. Keane said the agency has received hundreds of responses that will help inform potential policy decisions and could guide future regulatory actions.
Existing rules governing the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, a nationwide network designed to improve health information exchange, limit how providers can use patient data, including restrictions on selling information or sharing it with marketers. However, Mr. Keane noted that patients who obtain their own medical data can choose to share it with third-party platforms.
Mr. Cassidy said many consumers may not fully understand the risks of sharing sensitive health data with AI tools and suggested clearer warnings about how information could be used.
Mr. Keane told lawmakers that current federal authorities do not allow regulators to control how data is used once patients have voluntarily shared it with external technologies.
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